Mungo Park and the Niger

by Joseph Thomson

The vital forces which had found no barrier in the fierce nomads and physical difficulties of the Sahara, and had carried the disciples of Mohammed to the borders of the Sudan, met a check to their sweeping progress where one would have least expected it. Half the secret of the success of Islam had been that principle in the creed which was calculated to attract and inflame the ardent imaginations and easily excited temperaments of the Berber tribes of the north. With these Mohammedanism required but little aid from fire and sword for the spread of its tenets. It had but to be preached to be believed, making every hearer not only a convert but a missionary aflame with enthusiasm for the cause of God and Mohammed. Such, however, was not the case when Islam came face to face with the undeveloped lethargic minds of the barbarous blacks of the Sudan. The intellect of the negro had to be prepared for the reception of the new spiritual doctrines.

For a time a hard and fast line existed between Islam and Heathendom more or less closely coinciding with that drawn between Berber and Negro, Sahara and Sudan.

Only for a time, however. Though the new religious force could sweep on no longer in an irresistible, all-embracing tide, it was not to be prevented from gradually working its way into the sodden mass of Paganism. Along the whole line of opposing forces from Senegambia to Lake Chad, Mohammedan missionaries penetrated, not with fire and sword and all the horrors of brute force, but armed with the spiritual weapons of faith, hope, and ardent enthusiasm. Under their fostering care schools and mosques arose, around which converts gathered in ever-increasing numbers, until at length every region had its leavening germs, and awaited but the proper moment and the inspired leader to raise the watchword of Islam, and once more sweep onward with all the accumulated force of the dammed back torrent.

Within a short time of each other two such leaders appeared at opposite points of the Niger basin. In the west, near the great bend of the Niger, a king of Songhay embraced Islam about the year 1000, while near the close of the same century a king of Bornu followed his example.[1]

From those dates a new and more promising era commenced for the Central and Western Sudan. Under the fostering care and impulse of the new religion these backward regions commenced an upward progress. A new and powerful bond drew the scattered congeries of tribes together and welded them into powerful communities. Their moral and spiritual well-being increased by leaps and bounds, and their political and social life took an altogether higher level. The arts and industries of the North speedily became established among them, and with them came the love of decent dress, of cleanliness, of more orderly conduct. Whatever might be said of Mohammedanism in its final influence, there could be no question but that it had the amount of good in it necessary to raise a barbarous people to a higher level of civilisation. There was an adaptability and a simplicity about it well suited to the comprehension of untutored minds, and in that lay the secret of a success such as has never since been even distantly approached by any other propagandist religion in Africa.

To the rulers of Songhay and Bornu the watchword of Islam, “There is no God but the one God,” soon became a war-cry destined to be irresistible in its magic influence. Armed with the new spiritual force these hitherto barbarous kingdoms rose to extraordinary heights of power. Songhay gradually spread its influence over all the upper reaches of the Niger till it had absorbed the old kingdoms of Ghanata, to the north of the Niger, and Melli, to the south. With the political influences of Songhay went the religious forces at its back. At times there were checks to its military power, but only when the religious enthusiasm and missionary ardour of its rulers temporarily sank and were outstripped by the greater zeal of neighbouring princes. With these exceptions, the history of Songhay was that of general progress, political, social, and commercial. The kingdom reached the zenith of its power at the beginning of the sixteenth century under a powerful negro king named Hadj Mohammed Askia, whose rule extended from the centre of the present empire of Sokoto to the borders of the Atlantic, a distance from east to west of 1500 miles, and from Mosi in the south as far as the oasis of Tawat in the north, i.e., something over 1000 miles.[2]

Askia was no mere warrior anxious for his own aggrandisement. As was the case with all the great Sudanese rulers of those early days, he was noted for his ardent faith as well as for his love of justice and clemency, so that, as his historian, Ahmed Baba of Timbuktu, wrote of him, “God made use of his services in order to save the true believers (in Negroland) from their sufferings and calamities.” He built mosques and schools, and did everything in his power to encourage learning; and not unmindful of the material prosperity of his people, encouraged merchants from all parts of the Sudan, the Sahara, and North Africa. Thus not only was he loved and revered by his subjects, but his fame extended to the most distant countries.

Unhappily the magnificent empire thus founded had not the elements of stability. There was too much of the one man power, with no firm governmental foundations apart from the ruler. In consequence, the history of Songhay was one of varying fortunes. Old kingdoms such as Melli temporarily regained their independence, distant provinces were continually breaking loose, and there were constant wars of succession and military revolts. But though often scotched it was never killed, till an altogether new enemy appeared in the person of Mulai Hamed, Sultan of Morocco, before whose musketeers it was doomed to become extinct as an independent kingdom. This happened in 1591, in the reign of Askia Ishak. Ahmed Baba, the native historian, who lived at the time, and was himself not only a material sufferer, but a prisoner carried off to Morocco, said of this terrible disaster: “Thus this Mahalla (or expedition) at that period found in Sudan (Songhay) one of those countries of the earth which are most favoured with comfort, plenty, peace, and prosperity everywhere; such was the working of the government of the Emir el Mumenin, Askia el Hadj Mohammed ben Abu Bakr, in consequence of his justice and the power of his royal command, which took full and peremptory effect, not only in his capital (Gogo), but in all the districts of his whole empire, from the province of Dendi to the frontier of Morocco, and from the territory of Bennendugu (to the south of Jinni) as far as Zeghaza and Tawat. But in a moment all was changed, and peaceful repose was succeeded by a constant state of fear, comfort and security by troubles and suffering; ruin and misfortune took the place of prosperity, and people began everywhere to fight against each other, and property and life became exposed to constant danger; and this ruin began, spread, increased, and at length prevailed throughout the whole region.”[3] If it be remembered that this was written in Arabic by a Niger native at the end of the sixteenth or beginning of the seventeenth centuries about a negro sultan ruling over a kingdom partly negro and partly Berber, the wonder of it cannot but strike the thoughtful mind.